Rome Prisma Film Awards is managed by Il Varco srls, a film production company based in Rome, Italy. The producer of the event is Marco Crispano, the artistic director is Marcello Di Trocchio. Details on our staff can be found on the Staff page.

Submissions are pre-selected by interns of Il Varco srls in Rome, Italy, and then watched again by the artistic director Marcello Di Trocchio which decides which films are picked and which are not. Usually if interns don’t select a film, it will not get selected later. If the intern selects the film, later the artistic director might change his mind about it. We roughly receive around 180 submissions per month spanning all categories, with the Short Film category receiving more projects than any other. 

Reviews have a promotional approach. It means that Marianna, our review manager, makes her best effort to try and highlight the best features of the film and to omit flaws and things that may be weaker. Being a self-promotion and marketing tool for the film, these reviews do not represent our critical point of view, they’re meant to market your film and to help spread it to your audience. Promo Reviews are public, we share them on our website

Feedbacks have a critical approach. They are done with the purpose of giving back a sincere evaluation  by our review manager Marianna who, alongside her own personal view, expresses the editorial line of the festival. They may contain advices or praises and they are meant to be stimulating in order to improve the reviewed film or to give you suggestions for future ones. Feedbacks are private, we never share them public. 

Our submitters agree to receive discounts from our partner festivals. Discounts will be sent through our mailing service Sendinblue and they annually amount to roughly $40. Occasionally, we will send extra mails from the staff themselves that have a promotional invitation to submit. These mails are not personal and they don’t guarantee a Monthly Pick or an award in our competition. 

As our motto says, We look for meaning. We look for unity. We look for balance. This not only reflects the way we work ourselves, but also the way we take care of the selection process:

Meaning. A story that works should start from a need, from a voice of its author, but it should also and above all have the ability to speak to other people, potentially to all people. From “It means something to me” to “It could mean something to everyone”. Therein lies the difference between dealing with stereotypes and dealing with archetypes.

Unity. A film is as successful as its parts find unity within the whole. Unity of detail in the story and in the visual-sound material as a totality, coherence and compactness of the overall authorial vision, unity between the author’s sensitivity and the sensitivity of the viewers to whom the author addresses himself.

Balance. Impose its own message or allow the viewer to also read his own? To focus on the ending or to distribute interest throughout all the narrative line? Betting only on the quality of the image or only on the originality of the screenwriting? Spectacle/intimacy? Imagination/reality? Humility/audacity? We look for balance, an always-changing balance.

Roughly 60% of the submissions are picked for the Monthly Picks, but the percentages might vary from month to month and from category to category: it is lower in the Short Film category and higher in low submitted categories like Web Series or Animation.

Monthly Picks means that the film has something to tell. It may not be a professional piece but it’s a complete, working, enjoyable project that is directed with all the needs of a film in place. It means it is a film that people can actually watch and enjoy. Many films today are well shot, have good, enjoyable scripts, but cannot stand the competition of big productions with development teams, public funds and years of expertise behind, so they never get into recognized festivals and this ends up being frustrating and disproportionate for the filmmakers. Our Monthly Pick is to give these films the possibility to start their festival run, to be acknowledged as films.

Depending on the category, roughly 30% of the Monthly Picks end up being selected as finalists. The percentages might vary from month to month and from category to category: it is lower in the Short Film category and higher in low submitted categories like Web Series or Animation. In this stage we try to promote films that shine among the others for any reason, especially for the meaning they carry, having a higher quality standard, filmmaking language and overall beauty. They have something else that the non-finalists don’t have which we are honoured to highlight. 

Three films per category are nominated for a monthly award. This usually represents 10% of all the films we receive. The percentages might vary from month to month and from category to category: it is lower in the Short Film category and higher in low submitted categories like Web Series or Animation. A nominee is a film which deserves to receive a recognition for one or more of our 24 monthly awards: it might have a brilliant script, a great cinematography, outstanding actors performances or simply shine in its format or genre. 

One film per category wins the monthly competition, resulting in 24 monthly awards. Some films usually end up winning more than one award, as usually the Best of Fest Nominees are works that really shine among the others, in several technical aspects. It happened that some films ended up winning 7-10 awards in the same month because of their outstanding qualities. Winning films are films from any genre. Sometimes they’re high budget films, sometimes they’re independent gems. We have winning films from all kinds of background.